JDBC, Java Database Connectivity, is the protocol that Java uses
to connect to databases. In order for it to work a JDBC driver for the
database you want to connect to must be available in your CLASSPATH. In
Java the CLASSPATH is an environmental variable that has the OS specific
directory paths to where your classes can be found. The JDBC driver is in
fact a class or several classes. All Java classes have a ".class"
extension". In the event that the driver requires several classes they are
often zipped together using the Java ARchiver (JAR) with an extension of ".jar".
In the case of MySQL, the JDBC driver is called:
mysql-connector-java-5.1.22-bin.jar - Because it has a jar extension it is actually several
classes zipped up together. In order for you to connect to an MySQLdatabase, this file needs to be in your CLASSPATH. For example if the
above file exists http://timlin.net/mysql-connector-java-5.1.22-bin.jar, then this entire
file name must be part of my CLASSPATH. In Unix or Linux you set this as
such.